Fear, Faith and Embodying Shraddhā
Śraddhā ~ श्रद्धा ~ Shraddhā
I was born into a body with the blood of Holocaust survivors coursing through my veins and arteries. Growing up I received messages of both fear and love. Fear that carried a vibration that seemed to say, “be careful about who and what you trust”. And the question, “ If there is a God, how could so many horrific things happen, like the ones our family either died or lived through?”.
The other side of the fear was love…stay close, love each other deeply and protect one another. While the love was mixed with self-protection, it carried the message to have faith in love.
I didn’t feel safe in my body nor did I feel a trust in Life - a theme I’d see come and go throughout the years. As a highly sensitive being, I could feel everything - the wonderful, the painful, and everything in between. When my sensitivity turned into extreme anxiety I was tossed into a yogic journey and self inquiry, although I didn’t yet know that yoga existed. I was taught to breathe, slow down, to ground into my body and to understand that my thoughts didn’t define me.
In 1998, at age 18, I learned about the path of yoga and started taking yoga āsana and prānāyāma classes as a student at UMass. Immediately my inner world began to change. Soon after my outer world changed in the ways I chose to spend my time and energy. I knew I had found my life’s path, practice and service. Not too long after, I learned the Sanskrit word shraddhā.
Simplistically, shraddhā means faith. When I heard it, something in me lit up like I had found my spirit word. Or if we could have a soul mate in a word, it was this one. It was a word that I knew I needed to embody and that I already did embody it, somewhere inside of me. And somewhere in the middle of my heart, I knew that shraddhā was a part of the very fabric I was made up of as well as my practice and my path.
From that moment in time, I understood that my life would be a dance between fear and faith, self-protection and trust, control and surrender.
So what does shraddhā mean?
Some definitions are: faith, to have faithfulness, believing in, trust.
To expand on these definitions based on my personal experiences…
Shraddhā is:
A state of being that I can feel towards any and all aspects of life.
A deep knowing that a divine stream is carrying all of us forward with a plan that is bigger than each individual, yet includes All.
Having faith in change, growth and evolution - instead of tales the cynical mind spins.
A conscious choice to surrender, and keep the faith when facing the unknown, unseen or yet to come.
The place I go inside myself when a decision needs to be made or there is an unknown moment in time. It’s like standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump, not knowing where I will land, when I will land or how I will land. Yet there is a deep knowing that I will land. That there is a steady flow of divine love carrying me, holding me and bringing me forward.
The trust I hold in my heart-mind that all will be as it is meant to be when I experience something like a lack of peaceful closure, understanding or repair that I had hoped to have with someone or something I care about.
The trust and faith I have when I witness my teens struggling. I feel the fear and the desire to control and tell them what they should do. Then tuning in deeper, I try to listen and support them as best I can. Ultimately I root into faith that they too are held and will find their way through ~ growing and learning along the way.
Keeping faith that although rains keep pouring, waters keep rising and fields of crops are being washed away, we will be shown what to do to help one another through and keep taking steps towards healing our beloved Earth. It isn’t sitting back and saying oh well. It is a release of cynicism and a rise of trust. It’s moving forward to bring remedy from a place of hope, discernment and clarity.
A generosity to give, love and serve while moving beyond anxiety, fear and self-protection.
That which I place in the middle of my heart and I ask it to show me the way. To direct me through life so that I may truly be of service to the Earth, the Divine One and all beings.
The trust and love that we can allow to hold us when we are grieving the death of someone we love or the massive destruction from war, crime, addiction and natural disasters.
Letting that “something magical” quality of life move me. You know those magical moments? Those moments when you are surrendered, in the flow and resting in something that you feel held and nourished within? Those are the moments when I KNOW with every cell of my body that I am a small part of something huge, beyond just this lifetime with all my current qualities and traits.
A union (yoga) with the individual river that flows purposefully to the Mother Ocean. It's knowing I am that river. And because I know I am that river, I choose to release control, actively surrender and trust the moving current of the water, always flowing towards unity with the Great Mother.
Is it easy for me to embody shraddhā?
Sometimes, but often not.
Do I experience fear?
Yes, quite often actually.
But I know that fear is just a wave of energy moving through me and it isn’t a solid, unchangeable aspect of my existence like I once thought it was. It's more like a coat I wear because I am attached to it. That somehow attaching myself to this coat and wearing the coat of fear protected me throughout my life. And over time I realized that my body has outgrown this coat and it's time to gently remove this tight fitting small jacket.
I say yes to taking the coat off because I know that who I am at my core is love, trust, faith, devotional surrender and service to the One. Not fear.
While shraddhā hasn’t always come naturally to me, I know it is my medicine. It is the way I am meant to live.
I want to remind you of your shraddhā. That there is something grand, beautiful and love filled that we can all surrender to and have faith in. You don’t have to live your life feeling separate, afraid, defensive or self-protective. You can find that which you trust. That which you have faith in and allow it to become a part of your whole life. Allow it to guide you from within.
Shraddhā Yoga is a place, a practice, and a being that says, “let's build a living yoga community together”. Faith and trust can lead us towards a greater yoga. A true, respectful, harmonious, awakened unity with all that is.
If this appeals to you, please join me on the quest of inviting shraddhā into your heart, so that together we can experience that all life is yoga.
With Love,
Corinne